California Governor Jerry Brown’s administration released new details today of its plan to protect fish and wildlife in the Sacramento-San-Joaquin Delta. As Amy Quinton reports from Sacramento, the plan revolves around new tunnels to carry more water to the Central Valley and southern California.

The new chapters of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan look at the effects of the project on endangered species like Delta Smelt and Chinook salmon.

Fish and wildlife experts say they don’t expect to see improvement in fish populations every season or life cycle. But they do expect a net gain when combined with habitat restoration and changes in natural water flow patterns.

Bill Jennings with the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance is highly critical of the project.

“You can’t deprive an estuary of half its flow and expect it to survive and frankly, BDCP is essentially a death sentence for one of the great estuaries in the world,” says Jennings.

Jennings says the proposed tunnels to pump water south would have disastrous effects on fish populations. A public hearing on the new chapters is scheduled for April 4th.

Related Content

State officials in Sacramento today released a portion of a new plan to restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and improve water reliability for southern California residents and farmers. Known as the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, the controversial project includes a $14 billion proposal to build two tunnels to carry water around the fragile ecosystem to users south of the delta.

California Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg says lawmakers plan to rewrite the $11 billion water bond for the November 2014 ballot – and the new version will likely have less money for storage projects such as dams.

“There will continue to be a chapter for storage. I don’t think there will be nearly the same amount of money in that chapter as there was in the original bond. And I think there will be de-emphasis, frankly – or at least, on the same surface storage projects,” says Steinberg.

Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a new $23.7 billion proposal that would build a twin tunnel system to carry water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta over to the southern part of the state.

Water in Southern California has become an intractable problem. The frustration was evident at the press conference, when Brown dropped a four-letter expletive.

There’s a push for a new look at the $11 billion water bond now scheduled for California’s November 2014 ballot. As Ben Adler reports from Sacramento, some lawmakers want to reduce the bond’s size, while others want to rewrite it entirely.

Democratic Senator Lois Wolk represents the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta region – and she’s long felt the bond approved in 2009 was a bad piece of legislation. Now that it’s been pushed back a second time, Wolk has introduced a bill that would start over: